Malala Yousafzai Trivia
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47 free Malala Yousafzai trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Malala Yousafzai was eleven when she began an anonymous diary about life under the Taliban in Pakistan's Swat Valley, fifteen when the 2012 attack made her a global figure, and still a teenager when she became the youngest Nobel laureate in history. Few lives have been so public so early, and the detail is far richer than the headlines. These 47 questions follow the whole arc: the BBC diary and the newspaper documentary that followed it, the hospital and the school in England, the UN speech on her sixteenth birthday, the memoir and the picture book, the charity she founded with her father, the Oxford degree, and the honours, from a Pakistani bravery award to an object in the night sky that carries her name. Play it to see how much of the story you actually know, or print it for a classroom, a youth group or a quiz night with a human-rights round.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which pseudonym, taken from a folktale heroine, did Malala Yousafzai use for her BBC Urdu blog from Taliban-held Swat?
Gul Makai
Gul Makai, "cornflower", was the BBC reporter's pick to hide the 11-year-old's identity; she got the diary because no other family in Swat would let a daughter write it.
Q 02Malala Yousafzai grew up in which Pakistani city, evacuated in May 2009 as the army moved against the Taliban?
Mingora
Mingora, the largest city in the Swat Valley, emptied as the army fought the Taliban for it; her family fled and could not go home for almost three months.
Q 03Whose shawl did Malala Yousafzai wear for her first public speech since the attack, at the UN on her 16th birthday?
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto's shawl was on her shoulders at the UN on 12 July 2013, a day the UN called Malala Day; she had long named Pakistan's assassinated prime minister as an inspiration.
Q 04After the 9 October 2012 attack, Malala Yousafzai was flown to which English city's Queen Elizabeth Hospital?
Birmingham
Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital specialises in treating military personnel injured in conflict, and the city became her home: she finished school there and co-founded the Malala Fund while based there.
Q 05Malala Yousafzai's 2014 Nobel co-laureate, Kailash Satyarthi of India, is best known for campaigning against what?
Child labour
Child labour is the target of Kailash Satyarthi's Save the Childhood Movement, which has freed tens of thousands of children from slavery and forced work; his GoodWeave label certifies carpets made without it.
Q 06Which British journalist co-wrote Malala Yousafzai's memoir I Am Malala, published a year after the attack on her?
Christina Lamb
Christina Lamb, a Sunday Times correspondent whom Pakistan had deported in 2001 over her reporting, co-wrote the book, published on the eve of the attack's first anniversary.
Q 07Which kind of celestial object, catalogued as number 316201, was named after Malala Yousafzai in 2015?
An asteroid
An asteroid, 316201 Malala, circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter; Amy Mainzer, the NASA astronomer who found it in 2010, used her naming rights to honour her.
Q 08The audiobook of the young readers' edition of I Am Malala won a 2015 Grammy Award in which category?
Best Children's Album
Best Children's Album went to the young readers' edition read by Neela Vaswani, so the trophy was the narrator's, not the author's; Vaswani said she had no idea a children's book could even be nominated.
Q 09On her 18th birthday Malala Yousafzai opened a school for Syrian refugee girls in which of Syria's neighbours?
Lebanon
Lebanon's school, near the Syrian border, teaches girls aged 14 to 18 and is funded by her charity; at its opening she urged world leaders to invest in "books, not bullets".
Q 10An 11-year-old Malala Yousafzai gave her first speech on education rights at which city's press club?
Peshawar
Peshawar's press club heard her ask "How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?", a line that newspapers and TV channels across the region picked up in September 2008.
Q 11Which newspaper's reporter Adam B. Ellick made the 2009 documentary Class Dismissed about Malala Yousafzai?
The New York Times
The New York Times had Ellick film her family through the last days before the Taliban's ban closed her school in January 2009, then make a second film, A Schoolgirl's Odyssey.
Q 12Which body awarded Malala Yousafzai its 2013 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, a year before her Nobel?
European Parliament
European Parliament leaders gave her the Sakharov Prize from a shortlist that also held the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden and three jailed Belarusian dissidents.
Q 13Which archbishop nominated the 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai for the International Children's Peace Prize in 2011?
Q 21On which late-night host's show did the 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai promote her memoir I Am Malala in October 2013?
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart heard the 16-year-old explain on The Daily Show why she would not even hit a Taliban gunman with her shoe: "then there would be no difference between you and the Talib."
Q 22Malala Yousafzai is named after Malalai of Maiwand, said to have rallied Afghan fighters against the army of which empire in 1880?
The British Empire
The British Empire's troops lost the Battle of Maiwand in the Second Anglo-Afghan War; Afghan legend says the teenage Malalai rallied her wavering countrymen to the victory.
Q 23In 2014 Malala Yousafzai received an Award for Moral Courage named after which Holocaust-era figure?
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu announced her as one of five nominees for the Dutch children's prize in 2011; a South African teenager won that year, but she took it outright in 2013.
Q 14In 2017 Malala Yousafzai became the youngest person to address the parliament of which country, which made her an honorary citizen?
Canada
Canada first planned the ceremony for October 2014, but she had reached Toronto airport when a gunman's attack on Parliament Hill forced a postponement; she became its sixth honorary citizen.
Q 15Which Oxford degree did Malala Yousafzai complete in June 2020?
Philosophy, Politics and Economics
Philosophy, Politics and Economics, the course of prime ministers from Harold Wilson to David Cameron, was hers at Lady Margaret Hall; after her last exam she said her plans were "Netflix, reading and sleep".
Q 16Which climate activist travelled to Oxford University to meet Malala Yousafzai while she was a student there?
Greta Thunberg
Greta Thunberg tweeted "today I met my role model" after the visit to her college, and her host answered that the Swede was "the only friend I'd skip school for".
Q 17Malala Yousafzai signed a multiyear 2021 deal to produce dramas, comedies and children's series for which streamer?
Apple TV+
Apple TV+ announced the deal on International Women's Day 2021, with the shows to come from Extracurricular, the production company she set up for it.
Q 18Malala Yousafzai's 2017 picture book, illustrated by Kerascoët, takes its title from which magic object?
A pencil
A pencil that makes drawings real is what the young narrator of Malala's Magic Pencil wishes for, an idea borrowed from Shaka Laka Boom Boom, an Indian TV show she watched as a child.
Q 19Besides Urdu and English, Malala Yousafzai is fluent in which language, the tongue of her Yusufzai tribe?
Pashto
Pashto is the language of the Pashtuns, and her family belongs to the Yusufzai tribe that gives her its surname; she was educated mostly by her father, a poet who ran a chain of private schools.
Q 20Which British ex-prime minister, as UN education envoy, launched the 'I am Malala' petition after the 2012 attack?
Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown launched the petition six days after the shooting, calling on Pakistan to give every girl a school place and on the world to get all children into class by the end of 2015.
Anne Frank
Anne Frank's name was on the award, given by the Anne Frank Trust UK; months earlier a leading US newspaper critic had written that only Frank's diary rivalled I Am Malala as a moving chronicle of war.
Q 24A 2013 painting of Malala Yousafzai by Jonathan Yeo was displayed at which London institution?
National Portrait Gallery
National Portrait Gallery visitors saw her painted doing homework, the everyday act that nearly cost her life; Yeo later auctioned the canvas for $102,500 to benefit her fund.
Q 25In 2017 Malala Yousafzai became the youngest person ever appointed to which honorary United Nations role?
Messenger of Peace
Messenger of Peace is the highest honour a UN secretary-general can give a private citizen; the one who gave it to her at 19 called her a symbol of "perhaps the most important thing in the world, education for all".
Q 26The Malala Fund, which Malala Yousafzai co-founded with her father in 2013, is headquartered in which city?
Washington
Washington is home to the fund, a US-registered charity that pays for the work of local education campaigners in countries such as Pakistan, Nigeria and Brazil.
Q 27When Ebola shut schools for months, the Malala Fund paid for radios so 1,200 girls could keep learning in which country?
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone moved its lessons onto the radio when Ebola shut its schools in 2014; the fund paid for sets for 1,200 of the poorest girls and for small study groups with mentors.
Q 28Which Pakistani body announced a ban on I Am Malala across its 152,000 members, saying it disrespected Islam?
Private Schools Federation
Private Schools Federation members across Pakistan were told the memoir could have a "negative" influence, even as it won awards abroad and a 2014 children's edition followed.
Q 29The 2014 children's edition of I Am Malala completes its subtitle 'How One Girl Stood Up for Education and...' how?
Changed the World
Changed the World took the place of the adult subtitle's blunter ending, "and Was Shot by the Taliban", in the edition written for younger readers.
Q 30For its mountain scenery, Malala Yousafzai's home valley of Swat was long nicknamed after which European country?
Switzerland
Switzerland lent Swat its nickname, and Queen Elizabeth II praised the valley on a 1961 visit; honeymooners and skiers kept coming until the Taliban took it over in 2007.